Mona Z. Smith's journey from Winnetoon to New York City has been fueled by stories - the stories of life in a small Nebraska town, the stories she reported as a journalist and, now, those she writes for the stage.

"I grew up with characters," says Smith, who was Mona Koppelman in those days. "My family was full of them. My town was full of them. We swapped stories on porches; we told tales in the tornado cellar; we spun yarns during long winter nights playing cribbage, pitch and euchre for a penny a game. This was my hometown of Winnetoon, Neb., population 62, if you count the strays."

Much of Smith's love of storytelling and the magic of words came from her father, who died this winter, culminating 85 years of hard work, love of learning and devotion to his family. Smith's dad worked for the local rendering company.

"When cattle or hogs or sheep died from lightning strike or heat stroke or poison weed," she says, "Roy picked them up and hauled them to a rendering plant."

As a teen-ager in need of funds for a used car, Smith found employment with her father.

"The good part about the Dead Truck job was listening to Roy tell his stories," she says. "The bad part about the Dead Truck job was the smell."

Among her fondest memories are the trips through the hill country listening to her father's tales or his recitation of Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquy. She says that although Roy never got to finish high school, he reveled in life and learning. All of his children earned advanced degrees. Smith's brother and two sisters are teachers who married teachers.

A National Merit scholarship and a couple of side jobs saw Smith through the University of Nebraska-Lincoln journalism college.

"In looking back at my time at Nebraska, the things I learned there were immensely important," says Smith. "In advanced reporting, for every single error - spelling, grammar, punctuation - we had to write a separate story. That kind of discipline has served me well. You have to take that much care."

After graduating, Smith went to work for the Miami Herald.

"At the tender age of 21, I interviewed cops over dead bodies, wrangled with corrupt politicians, spied on corporate polluters," she says. "Years passed, idealism waned, cynicism set in and my love for my fellow man began to sour a little."

She reacted like any bright young American woman would. She went to France for three years. While there, she fell in with a theatrical crowd and became enamored of the dramatic process, from conception to stage.

She wrote a play that gained her admittance to the graduate theatre program at Columbia University's School of the Arts in New York City. There, she studied with such experienced luminaries as Andrei Serban.

In 1994, armed with an MFA, she settled into life as an arts administrator by day and a playwright by night. She fits time with her husband and 11-year-old daughter around the edges of these occupations.

Her life is demanding, exhausting and often frustrating, Smith says, but the effort has begun to bear fruit.

Borderlands, a play Smith set in Bosnia during the last decade of the millennium, has been presented at the SoHo Repertory Theatre in New York City, at the Live Arts Theatre in Charlottesville, Va., at The Rose Theatre in Los Angeles and for the DramaRama competition in San Francisco. It earned Smith the National Berilla Kerr Playwriting Prize for 1997 and was a 2001 DramaRama finalist. Smith describes the work as a tragic-comedy about men and women, sex and war, gender and identity.

Her Fire in a Dark House, about a German-American family persecuted during World War I, was presented at the Festival of New Plays at Niagara Falls University and at Oscar Hammerstein II Center in New York as part of the Second Stage Festival.

Smith received John Golden Awards for Playwriting at Columbia University in 1992 and 1994 for Borderlands and Fire in a Dark House.

Another play, Mystifying Dick/Satisfying Jane, was presented at Ward Nasse Gallery and at Second Stage Theatre's Month of Sundays, both in New York City.

A new work, Dream of a Dead Samurai, about a company of Japanese-American soldiers stationed in France during World War II, has been presented in workshop at Niagara Falls University.

Just now, her heart lies with her current project, Becoming Something. It is a fascinating fictional tale based on actual events in the life of African-American actor and activist Canada Lee. The project has been in the works six years and will be at New York's Kraine Theater in May.

"Becoming Something was 'workshopped' at the Strasberg Creative Center in Los Angeles," says Smith, "but, this is the first real shot for this particular play. It will be a showcase production with a cast of eight actors - a blueprint for something this play could become."

Smith has received a contract from Faber and Faber to write Lee's biography. A team has also asked to make a documentary on Smith, Canada Lee and the development of Becoming Something.

Smith says it is rewarding to see things beginning to fall together.

When she received the check from Faber and Faber for the Canada Lee biography, Smith says it was the first time in a while she had gone to bed feeling like everything was okay.

She struggles to balance her day job - she is the adult programs manager for the Brooklyn Museum of Art - with family life and the full-time job of writing, which she does faithfully each night. She says the support she receives from her family is the saving grace.

After her father's death, Smith says she began to question the wisdom of continuing to pursue her dream of writing plays. Her husband, Greg - a French horn player and teacher - reminded her that they are both in the arts - a field that requires its practitioners to take risks. He convinced her she must keep going.

"Thankfully, I have a patient kid," says Smith. "When I say, 'I need two hours to get some work done,' Emma usually says, 'It's okay. I'm working on a play, too.' She has my old computer in her room and she writes plays and fiction."

"I don't want to take time away from my family," she says, "and some nights I come home really exhausted. But I make myself sit down at the computer and I always find that it makes me feel good.

"What are the rewards? At its essence, it's my chance to tell stories - and I don't want to do it at the local bar. I want to do it on a big scale. It's what makes me happy."

Reprinted with permission from Nebraska StatePaper.com and the author.